Side-paneled bridge.



0.1. WESTCOTT.

SIUE PANELED BRIDGE.'

APPUCATION FILED MAY17,1916.

Patented Jan. 1,1918.

@3Q/@JQ O.1.WESTCOTT.

SIDE PANELED BRIDGE.

APPLICAUON FILED MAY l1. 191e.

1,252,066. Patented Jan. 1,1918'.

2 SHEETS-SHEET 2.

OLIVER J. WESTCOTT, OF MAYWOOI), ILLINOIS, ASSIGNOR TO WESTCOTT ENGINEERING CO., OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, A CORPORATION OF ILLINOIS.

SIDE-PANELIED BRIDGE.

specification of Letters Patent.

. Patented dan. i, i918.

Application'led May 17, 1916. Serial No. 97,988.

To all whom t may concern Be it known that I, OLrvEn J. WEs'rco'rT, a citizenpof the United States, residing at Maywood. in the county of Cook and State of Illinois. have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Side-Paneled Bridges; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.

My invention relates to bridges, its general objects being to provide an arched bridge having an open work supporting structure between the arch or arches and the roadway, but giving the appearance of a dirt lilled bridge.v Reinforced concrete bridges of the dirt-filled type have the disadvantages that the excessive weight of the filling over that required for a framework supporting the roadway, increases the loads and stresses on the arches, abutinents, piers and foundations, so that all of the latter have to be made correspondingly larger and stronger; that the side pressure of the filling on the. spandrel walls requires these to be heavier than it' they were only ornamental facings; that the dirt filling gradually discolors and thereby disigures the spandrel walls: and that it is difficult to prevent the relative flexing of the roadway and the arches from cracking the spandrelwalls.

M v invention aims to overcome all of these objections and to provide a structure closely resembling a dirt-filled bridge in outward appearance but considerably lower in cost. This I accomplish by the means described in the following specification and disclosed in illustrative embodiments in the accompanying drawings, in which- Figure l is an elevation of an arched bridge embodying my invention.

. Fig. 2 is a fragmentary longitudinal section through the same along the line 2-2 of Fig. 3.

Fig. 3 is a transverse section taken along the line 3-3 of Fig. l.

Fig. 4 is an enlarged fragmentary section of an edge portion of the bridge, taken along the line 4 4 of Fig. 2.

Fig. 5 isan enlarged fragmentary vertical section showing adjoining portions of an arch and a side section.

u'ig. 6 is a similar horizontal section showing the interlocking of one of the risers with two of the side panels. 4

Fig. 7 is a horizontal section showing portions of two of the side panels at the eX- treme right of F ig. 1, and of an adjacent riser.

In the embodimentof the drawings, the bridge of my invention includes a roadway 1 carrying paving blocks 24 and railings 3. Disposed at some distance below this roadway are a series of relatively spaced arches 4 extending between common abutments 5 carried by piers (l. Interposed between this arch formation and the roadwayis an openwork structure, consisting in this instance of risers 7 mounted on the respective arches and carrying girders 8 each supported jointly by one row of the laterally alined risers. The various elements of the openwork structure are preferably made of reinfor-ced concrete and interconnected by suitable reinforcing 9, while the abutments, piers and arches are likewise interconnected. IVhen thus erected, the construction as re cited forms a bridge having laterally open spaces between the roadway, arches, girders and risers, which openings readily permit of inspecting the various parts during the initial testing of the bridge for observing their respective defiections and for locating any possible flaws. However, the presence of these open spaces makes the structure far less pleasing in appearance than the panel or spandrel wall older types of bridges having spandrel wallsv coperating with an arch for retaining a dirt filling which latter supports the roadway. To improve this appearance, I provide spandrel walls 10 at the opposite sides of the bridge, each of said walls being carried by one of the sidemost arches. Each spandrel wall preferably is composed of a number of sections, each section being keyed to at least one of the risers and girders and likewise keyed to the adjacent sections. The keyed or interlocked parts 15 of these adjacent bridge members are preferably separated by insertions of tar paper 16 or the like, which insertions allow a relative moyement of the interlocked parts, thus forming expansion joints for permitting a relative flexing of the arch and the roadway without cracking the spandrel walls.

lVhen the sections of each spandrel wall stretch between consecutive risers, as in the central portion of Fig. 1, each adjacent riser may be interlockcd with two ot the wall sections, as in Fig. 6. It will be obvious that since there is no dirt filling to produce a side pressure on either of the spandrel walls, and since the roadway is carried by the risers and girders independent of these walls, the latter' may be made very much thinner and lighter than would be permissible with dirt filled arched bridges. Indeed, these walls may be reduced to mere panels, the prime function of which is to conceal the openwork structure interposed between the arches and the roadway. Thus, the strains on the arches may be lightened while the riser and girder construct-ion may easily be considerably lighter than a corresponding dirt filling 4and the supporting arch structure need not belcontinuous laterally of the bridge but may be composed of spaced sections as shown in Fig. 3. Consequently, the total weight and cost of the bridge (including a reduction in the required size of the piers and abutments) maybe considerably reduced, while maintaining the handsome appearance of the dirt filled bridge. Moreover` since the side pan eling is independent of the supporting of the roadway (under which latter' term l am in; cluding both the driveway and the sidewalks together with the railing adjacent to the lat ter), the strains to which the spandrel walls of arched concrete bridges are usually subjected are reduced to the relatively slight compressing and distorting strains due to the flexing of both the roadway and the arch or arches supporting the latter.

Being divided into relatively movable sections or panels, the side walls can readily adjust themselves to these strains, and it a cracking of a panel should'still occur this scribed my invention as embodied inabridge ha ving a plurality of arches in lateral alinement and as having panels reaching from the center line of one riser to that of the next, do not wish to be limited to these or other details oi the construction herein dis'- closed, it being obvious that there might be many variations from the above disclosure without departing from the spirit of the accompanying claims. For example, instead of interlocking any one section of the spandrel wall with a riser or girder at a lateral edge of this section, the latter might be keyed intermediate of its edges toa part of the open-work supporting structure, as shown in Fig. 7.

l claim as my invention:

1. In a bridge, an arch, a roadway, rigid supporting members interposed therebetween and spandrel walls including sections movable in all directions with respect to,

but intcrengaged with, both the arch and certain ot' the supporting members; the roadway being supported entirely by the said rigid members independently of the spandrel walls.

Q. ln a reinforced concrete bridge, laterally spaced arches, a series of risers on each arch spaced and independent from the risers et' the adjacent lateral arch, transversely arranged girders common to and capping the risers of all the series and spanning the space between the series, and spandrel wall sections movably interlocked with the outer arches and with the risers to conceal the latter, the wall sections being bordered by eX- pansion joints whereby the sections are permitted to move relative to each other and to the adjacent bridge -yortions.

OLI ER J. WESTCOTT. 

